“You should go,” Tess said, looking beyond me to the ever-perky Alison, and then she turned, heading back into the kitchen, where the catering staff flitted from place to place like butterflies. I watched her go, her perfect form moving away from me as my heart sank.
* * *
Two hours later, the party was in full swing. Well-dressed locals meandered over the rolling green bank of the back lawn, glasses in hand, as waiters passed among the guests wielding silver trays filled with dainty hors d’ouevres.
Alison and the camera crew dogged every move Juliet and I made, and I was beginning to feel more like a crime suspect than a movie star. Every time I turned around, one of them was there, waiting to catch any remotely interesting action on film, to overhear a romantic tidbit shared between my fake girlfriend and me.
They were certainly disappointed, because I was quickly learning that either due to the stress and strangeness of the situation, or because of simpler, biochemical causes, Juliet and I didn’t have much to say to one another.
“Tess looks happy at least,” she said at one point, sending my gaze back across the lawn to the front of the big tent where Tess was standing with the tall man I’d seen kiss her earlier. I hadn’t noticed him returning, and I wasn’t pleased to see him now, standing there in his too-short suit and staring at Tess like she made the sun rise.
Maybe she did. I didn’t really blame him.
And Juliet was wrong, I thought. Tess was smiling, but she wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I just knew. There was a tightness around the corners of her smile, a hesitancy in her posture as the tall man leaned in to say something next to her ear. I might have known her only a few short days, but Tess was the one thing in the world that made sense to me, the one thing I knew I understood. And I hated seeing her fake happiness almost as much as I hated faking it myself.
Watching him close to her perturbed me. No, that wasn’t it. It infuriated me. I wanted to stride over there, yank him away from her and demand that he never touch her again.
Which would have been insane, but what about this weekend hadn’t been? Between my sudden heartsick love over a girl I couldn’t have, Gran’s not-so-subtle jabs at everyone, a lovesick house-chicken…the weekend had been weird. Insane, really. Punching out a stranger would fit right in.
“Who is that guy?” I asked Juliet, pleased when the question came out interested instead of crazy.
“Oh, that’s Tony Myers. He and Tess have had a thing, like, forever.”
Jealousy leapt into my gut, a green-eyed horned imp with a thirst for vengeance. “A thing?” What kind of thing?” That question came out much closer to crazy, and Juliet side-eyed me.
She waved her hand in the air. “They dated forever ago. He’s still hanging on.” She narrowed her gaze at me. “Why? Do you think whatever’s between you two could be … serious?” I couldn’t tell if she sounded concerned or just curious. Either way, she didn’t sound happy.
“Do you think she likes him?” I hated that the question sounded like something I would have asked in fifth grade and even more insane than the last one. And then I made it worse. “Like, likes him likes him?”
Juliet laughed, but her words didn’t reassure me. “I think she likes him enough. He’s local,” she said. “And eventually they’ll probably end up together. It just makes sense.”
It didn’t make sense to me. Tess didn’t love him. I could see that across the wide space between us. I had a sudden urge to sweep in, rescue her, cameras be damned. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Tess is a local girl,” Juliet went on. “She’s never had big plans, never wanted to leave here.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s the right guy for her.”
Juliet turned to face me, her posture more relaxed than it had been all night, and her interest in whatever I might say clear. The camera crew noticed her sudden shift, and flashes strobed as she stepped in even closer. “You do think there’s something serious going on with my sister,” she said, her eyes widening.
“Not that I can do anything about it with the vultures here,” I said, wishing I hadn’t voiced my regret aloud as I watched Juliet’s face morph from amused to sad. She let out a sigh.
“I’m sorry, Ryan. For all of this.” She said the words to me, but looked over my shoulder at the security team next to the tent entrance as she spoke. She really did look sorry in that instant, like this pretense was every bit as difficult for her as it had become for me.
“Come on, movie stars. Time to eat pig and celebrate me not being dead. Tess made a fantastic cake.” Gran stepped between us and took each of us by the elbow, dragging us toward the tent where the rest of the crowd was already sitting down and a pit-roasted pig was being paraded in on an extravagant platter.
Wow. That was something you did not see in Los Angeles every day.
Juliet and I were seated at a table across from Tess and Tony, who I was beginning to despise. He was leaning in close to her, kept draping an arm over the back of her chair, and was generally acting as if they were a couple. The guy in my gut poked me a few times with the stick I imagined him holding, trying to prod me into doing something crazy.
While I was essentially being paid to act as if Juliet and I were a couple.
Everything was a disaster.
But it was made impossibly worse when Alison and the camera crew set up on the opposite side of the tent, cameras aimed directly at Juliet and me. There wasn’t a moment when I might dare to stare at Tess, or throw a knife at Tony, since it could potentially be caught on camera and would undoubtedly be splashed across the Internet almost instantaneously. We were under a microscope, and I owed it to Juliet to remember that. I’d made her a promise, and she’d been hurt enough. My career wasn’t even my focus at this point—I would see this farce through and then… I didn’t know what would come next, but more and more I thought there was a different life for me. Waiting here in Maryland. My mind flashed to the other space the real estate agent had shown me—the vacant restaurant on the square in Leonardtown.
“So, you guys … how long have you been together?” It was Tony, leaning across the table to talk to Juliet and me. He waved between us with a steak knife, and I suppressed a shudder. Not that I hadn’t used my flatware to converse before, it was just one more thing I could choose to dislike about this guy.
I tried to impale him with tiny daggers fired from my eyeballs as Juliet smiled sweetly at him. “It’s new,” she said. “Just a few weeks now.” She leaned into me and I wrapped my arm around her, rubbing my hand up and down her arm. The motions came naturally, but they felt forced and wrong.
Tess’s eyes were on my hand, and I had to keep my heart from leaping out of my chest. It was killing me to know I was hurting her, and the way she was watching us made it clear that despite telling me to stay away, there were feelings there. A tiny hope inside me was trying to elbow Mr. Jealousy out of the way.
“Love in Hollywood,” Tony said, grinning. And then he reached for Tess and pulled her into his side. “We kind of have that too, right Tess? Just Hollywood, Maryland.”
Tess said nothing, but busied herself with her drink before stealing a glance up at me. Our eyes locked and heat washed through me. This was all so, so wrong.
“So Brian,” Tony said, pulling my gaze to his open grinning face. “What was that last movie I saw you in? On an island somewhere or something? Weren’t there like zombie islanders?”
I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that I was being filmed. I had to be nice. Or at least I could not leap across the table, remove the bright red apple from the pig’s mouth and shove it into Tony’s. “Pacific Pandemic,” I said.
“Ho, ho, yeah,” Tony said, laughing and shaking his head of too-shaggy dark hair. “That’s destined to be a cult classic, right man? Like way over the top stupid silly.”
“It was a horror thriller,” I said through my teeth. “The studio’s answer to World War Z.”
Tony guffawed some more
and stuffed some corn in his mouth. Then he continued to insult my career. “Brian, man,” he leaned in conspiratorially. “So when you’re in the middle of making a flop like that, do the actors know it? Or do you like, think things are going really well? Like you know you’re standing in a pile of shit, right? But you sign a contract or whatever, so you have to do it, right?” Juliet squeezed my hand, which helped slow down the angry rushing blood that was about to send me over the table to strangle Tony.
Tess was staring at Tony with her own mouth hanging open slightly, and she punched him in the upper arm as he finished this question. I opened my mouth to answer, but Juliet saved me.
“Tony,” Juliet said sweetly. “Hollywood is complicated, and sometimes we do movies we know won’t be blockbusters for strategic reasons. To get to know a director, or to be connected to another actor. It’s hard to explain. And it’s not Brian. It’s Ryan. Ryan McDonnell is going to be a household name pretty soon. He’s moving on to much bigger things,” she added. “Right, babe?”
Juliet held my hand tightly and she leaned close, clearly wanting me to kiss her now, to make this good for the ever-vigilant cameras. I appreciated her help with the d-bag, but my mind was a whir. My whole body was reaching for Tess, and her wide hazel eyes were so sad I felt like my heart was dissolving inside my chest. Had I done that to her?
I felt like whatever I did here was a choice laid out in front of me: Continue to go along with this charade, watching Tess being groped by some moronic redneck ex-boyfriend from her past, or stand up right here and tell her what I wanted, what I hoped, what I knew we could have.
But before I could make my choice, Tess abruptly stood. “Excuse me.” She turned and left the tent without another word, and Tony shrugged, returning his attention to the mountain of shredded pork on his plate.
I nearly stood to go after her, but then the DJ turned up the volume and Juliet pulled me out of my seat. “We’d better dance, put on a good show.”
Sadness floated inside me as I followed her to the dance floor, every cell in my body screaming to head the other way, to follow Tess from that tent.
Tony must’ve heard my body’s message because a few minutes later, he wiped his mouth, stood, and headed out the door of the tent, as my mind darkened.
Chapter Twenty
Tess
It wasn’t the mature thing to do. It wasn’t the right thing, considering this was Gran’s party. It wasn’t an even vaguely advisable thing to do, but I left the party. I stood up and walked out.
I couldn’t take one more second of watching Juliet and Ryan fawn over one another like the happy couple they were pretending to be. Were they even pretending? How could I trust a man who lied for a living when he told me it was all for show? How could I trust my sister’s words when her job was exactly the same? They were both too good at it, and I’d seen the way men fell for my sister for far too long. And that kiss on the lawn. That hadn’t been pretend. No one was that good an actor.
And then I’d seen them coming out of his room earlier.
I didn’t know Ryan McDonnell at all. He was an actor, and evidently a much better one than I’d realized. He was playing me, having both the Manchester sisters. I wondered if he and Juliet had a much more complicated deal than the one they’d told me about.
Even if Ryan had felt something for me—and honestly, that was unlikely given the amount of time he’d known me, and considering the Juliet-Manchester effect—it was probable that Juliet was the only Manchester girl in his heart now. She charmed everyone. Without even meaning to.
What started out as pretending might have evolved. She had that effect on people. On men. And it looked like Ryan had fallen under the spell. Just like every man who’d ever been interested in me—but then met my sister—besides Tony. A flat acceptance landed with a thud in my gut. I’d end up with Tony. He loved me, at least. But could I ever find even a spark of what I’d felt for Ryan with him?
I couldn’t think about it now.
I knew I’d have to go back inside. There were speeches to be made. I had to present the cake we’d made to Gran. She deserved everything and I needed to get over my own issues and go celebrate the woman who was parent and best friend to me now.
But I needed a few minutes of fresh air—even if the humidity that suffused Maryland’s signature evening atmosphere was pretty far from refreshing. I stood on the riverbank and looked out across the water.
This was home. This was grounding for me. This water, this land. This was where I belonged and what I was made of. And I’d forgotten it for a while in the grip of a wildly intoxicating fantasy. But I remembered it now.
Ryan McDonnell and Juliet would go back to Hollywood tomorrow, and I could go back to kayaks and calm. But I was pretty sure I’d never be settling down with Tony, no matter what everyone seemed to expect. He didn’t deserve a woman who didn’t love him.
I’d opened my mind for the evening, tried to give him a chance. But there was just nothing there, no more than there had been in seventh grade. We were not meant to be together any more than Buffy and Angel were—though we had a lot less of the star-crossed love thing going on. And a lot less blood sucking and general badassery, too.
“Hey there,” Tony’s voice came from behind me and I turned in the increasing darkness to see his tall form moving in next to me on the shore of the river. His presence was both comforting and depressing, if that was even possible. I was a mess.
“Hey,” I returned softly.
Twinkle lights were starting to glow in the trees around us, and the atmosphere would have been romantic, if only … but no, I needed to stop thinking that way.
“Everything okay?” Tony asked, his long arms crossed awkwardly in front of him. Though Tony had grown into his body, he still had a bit of goofy puppy dog in his mannerisms. I hoped someone would find it charming one day. He deserved to be loved.
“Yeah,” I said, turning to face him. “I’m sorry about dashing. I just needed a little air.”
“What else?” He asked.
Damn Tony for picking this instant to be insightful enough to realize there was something else going on.
“Nothing,” I tried.
“I’ve known you almost your whole life. I don’t think you can lie to me.”
I smiled at him, my heart softening. He had. He had known me forever. And I wasn’t the sister with the acting genes. “It’s just … Everything feels confusing.”
“Everything?”
“Tony,” I said slowly, looking up at my old friend. I knew it was time to address the situation between us—give us both permission to look forward instead of behind. “You know there’s never going to be anything romantic between us, right?”
He dipped his head for a minute and a sad smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I do know that. Was worth a try, though.”
Relief washed through me, along with a very platonic love for my old friend, and I looped my arm through his and leaned my head into his shoulder. “So, if you really want to know what’s bothering me, it’s boy trouble, I guess.” It was easier to talk if we both looked out at the constantly flowing river. “It’s Ryan.”
“Juliet’s boyfriend?”
“He’s not,” I corrected quickly. “Well, maybe he is. They started off pretending, but now I don’t really know. It’s just …” I trailed off.
“That is confusing.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” I tugged on his arm and smiled up at his familiar face, taking some comfort in my friend’s willingness to be just that. Just what I needed. A friend.
“Well Tess, I can’t tell you what to do about that. But I will tell you something else. Three things, actually.”
Tony had never been super insightful, so I was surprised he suddenly had three different opinions. I found myself smiling as I said, “Go for it.”
“One, I don’t care who he is or what he’s done, if he can’t see the incredible beauty and grace that surround you, he doesn’t deserve you. And
two, that movie he was talking about was pure shit. I don’t care how he spins it, and I’m not sure there’s any coming back from what happened in the final season of Charade of Stones anyway.” He grinned, and my sad heart lifted as I laughed. I hadn’t seen the movie—I hated zombies—but everyone had watched Charade when it was on five years ago. That was when I’d fallen in love with Ryan in the first place. That and the movie I’d watched on constant repeat.
“Wasn’t there a third thing?” I asked.
“Yeah, there is.” Tony smiled down at me. “Tonight isn’t about him. It’s about that lady who’s still sharp as a tack and mean as a pit bull, who’s sitting in there waiting for you to make a speech and give her a cake. She told me earlier she didn’t give two squirts of piss about the party, but that she couldn’t wait to get her hands on the cake. Her words.”
I swallowed hard. He was right. This wasn’t about me, or Ryan, or Juliet. Tonight was about Gran, and I was standing out here selfishly moping and wasting time. “You’re right.” I nodded. “You’re right. Come on, let’s go give Gran her cake.”
I held Tony’s arm, and we walked together back into the big tent, which was raucous now with the sound of loud music and people laughing. Bodies twirled in bright colors around the dance floor and the entire atmosphere inside felt light and fun. I spotted Ryan and Juliet dancing on the parquet tile and pushed down the knot that tried to rise up in my throat. This wasn’t about them. And it wasn’t about me or my stupid feelings.
I grinned over at Gran and she gave me a thumbs up, and then tapped her wristwatch and made a circling motion with her finger. Right. Time to get on with it.
I approached the DJ stand and a few minutes later the music faded and people retook their seats.
“Thanks everyone for coming tonight,” I began, uncomfortable at first with the microphone in my hand, my own voice booming through the tent, everyone’s eyes on me. I wasn’t used to being the center of attention. Not in this family.
Happily Ever His: Movie Stars in Maryland, Book One Page 17
